Woman fired over divorce can’t sue, creationists who want tax dollars to discriminate can

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/woman-fired-over-divorce-cant-sue-creationists-who-want-tax-dollars-to-discriminate-can/



Woman fired over divorce can’t sue, creationists who want tax dollars to discriminate can
Katie Halper
10 Feb 2015 at 08:07 ET

Well, this makes for a nice juxtaposition. A judge ruled that a woman has no right to sue her employer for firing her over her marital problems. But, at the same time, a Creationist non-profit has already sued the state of Kentucky for not subsidizing their Noah’s Ark replica or letting them discriminate against non-Christians.

Alyce Conlon was a spiritual director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, an organization that ministers to college students in Michigan. In 2011, she told her bosses about problems she was having in her marriage and confided that she was considering divorce. Her bosses, asking themselves What Would Jesus do, no doubt, put her on leave, first paid, then unpaid. A year later, having not achieved marital harmony and bliss, she was fired. The next month, her husband divorced her.

Conlon tried to sue IVCF because, she claimed, the organization did not fire two male employees they knew had divorced their wives. But the 6th Circuit Court ruled that she did not have the right to sue because federal discrimination laws do not apply to religious leaders at religious institutions. U.S. Circuit Judge Alice Batchelder wrote that, “The government cannot dictate to a religious organization who its spiritual leaders would be.” IVCF, Batchelder wrote, “believes in the sanctity of marriage and desires that all married employees honor their marriage vows,” and thus has the right to “consider the impact of any separation/divorce on colleagues, students, faculty and donors.”

Batchelder based her decision on “ministerial exception,” and the Supreme Court Case Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and Schools v. EEOC of 2012. The 6th Circuit argued that even though Conlon was not a minister or even an ordained clergy member, “Conlon’s duties was to assist others to cultivate ‘intimacy with God and growth in Christ-like character through personal and corporate spiritual disciplines.’ That is a ministerial function”

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